My grandmother and I -- well, parts of us -- live inside a cobalt blue glass plate radiant with a lace of silver, square and beautiful with a round shallow well in the center.

There, it is always one of my single-digit birthdays and the cobalt blue plate is always piled with the delicate fried pastry the Hungarians call csoroge -- crisp, pale, and snowy with powdered sugar. Little girls in pastel bouffant dresses are eating the csoroge (or not, depending on how Hungarian they are).

My grandmother died when I was 11 and her old house and beautiful garden got sold out from under me. I was too young to understand that during the move I should be vigilant about the cobalt blue glass plate.

Over the years, I asked my mother again and again if she knew what had happened to the cobalt blue glass plate with the silver trim. I guess she really didn't know. Once in a while she'd ask me if there were anything I wanted, and I would say the cobalt blue glass plate with the silver trim.

One day my mom found the cobalt blue glass plate and she gave it to me. You'd think I'd remember exactly when and where.

I don't.

I can only tell you that it's on my mantel now, held up by a plate stand that is silver in color to complement the silver on the plate. I can't let the plate off the mantel; I'm too afraid that in my care for it, I'd get nervous and let it slip down to the floor in a cobalt blue-and-silver starburst.

The plate is the only thing I own that I would like to decide about who gets it after I die, not a light matter for an only child who chose not to be a mother. Maybe I won't get to decide.

Thinking about not being able to decide about my cobalt blue glass plate is a kind of character education for me, a reminder that naked came I into this world and naked I shall leave it.

Here is something I did decide that involves the cobalt blue glass plate.

I went to an antiques show about a year ago, not to buy but just for the fun of looking.

There amidst the embroidered table cloths and old magazines and Kennedy stuff and dolls and all was a cobalt blue glass tumbler trimmed in silver that looked as though it was made to fit in the round shallow well in the center of the square cobalt blue glass plate that sits on my mantel and has parts of my grandmother and me inside of it.

I stared at that tumbler for such a long time, and thought about what to do about its being there.

I could afford to buy it -- that wasn't the issue. But should I bring it home? Should there be another piece of cobalt blue glass trimmed with silver to match my grandmother's beautiful plate with the mysterious, hypnotic color? Would buying the tumbler add to my memories or dilute them?

I left the cobalt blue tumbler with silver trim for someone else. It's enough to know that it exists and I hope for it -- I want for it -- that its color captures the imagination of a child who will treasure it 50 years from now.

Nov. 18 is the 45 th anniversary of hergrandmother's death.

The cobalt blue tumbler has become mine, in a way, because of its place on a shelf of my mind. I can neither hold it nor break it. The long minutes of my indecision bought it. But in the end, my grandmother and I weren't in it celebrating my birthday.

The cobalt blue plate with the silver trim and the tumbler that would have matched it have somehow formed a Communion set in my mind, the sacrament of a pastry I'll never taste again and a vessel I'll never drink from, a Communion service of deep blue glass into which my memories and my imagination dive again and again.

The Rev. Ellen C. Chahey is associate minister of the Federated Church of Hyannis.